Introduction

Changing times are structurally changing college football. Can this be made fair? Sustainable?

• Features that made CFB relevant are fading in unyielding economic arms race conditions.
• Evolutionary change (superconference formation, playoff expansion) drives this crisis.
• Sustainable, fair change can be done radically – built on promotion and relegation.

Here is an executive summary. Expansion on features, benefits, and costs may follow later.

Overview

Here’s a proposal to future-proof FBS league structure and regular and post-season formats:

• A three-level pyramid of small, localized leagues, linked by promotion and relegation.
• A return to a round-robin season, plus rivalry and title games, over the first 10 to 13 weeks.
• A postseason cup with 130 teams all in, from the week after their season to week 18.

The work isn’t shown below for space reasons, but the numbers do define a coherent system.

Pyramid

This system would pivot FBS from competing conferences to a united football league pyramid.

• 8 B (9 teams) and 4 A (11) regional leagues would support one P league for the top 14.
• Via promotion, champions at each level would win their way up to higher levels of play.
• Via relegation, last-place teams would drop to geographically applicable lower leagues.

This would accept the fact of CFB disparity, but respond fairly to programs’ growth or decline.

Season

This system sets up FBS to (mostly) bring back full round-robin conference seasons.

• Teams can play every league opponent once per season over nine (B) or eleven (A) weeks.
• With odd league sizes, every team gets one week for a rivalry game out of conference.
• At 14 teams, P will need a two-division format; an 11-week, 10-game schedule is proposed.

New rules with a new system could give every league a title game, plus semi-finals in P.

Cup

The postseason would see the 130 FBS teams all in, with staggered entry as seasons end.

• 64 teams from B would start in week 11, joined by 8 champs from B in week 12.
• 36 teams from A would also join week 12, and the 8 finalists from A in week 13.
• 10 teams from P would also enter in week 13, and the 4 P semifinalists in week 14.

This guarantees B teams at least 10 annual games, and A and P at least 12, with a max of 18.

Overview

Bolstering sustainability, fairness, and relevance will yield concrete gains for participants:

• The pyramid lets FBS entities commit to ending the wasteful arms race for league quality.
• The season matters more than ever due to pro/rel, stably geographic leagues, and the cup.
• The cup ends artificially scarce playoff access that drives inequality across programs.

Such gains may be shared across all FBS entities and passed on to fans as better football.

The pyramid

Pro/rel is the killer app of this proposal, halting arms race dynamics in FBS alignment.

• Scrambling for spots in top leagues and markets costs programs and disaffects fans.
• But a systemic solution must be an equilibrium, incentivizing commitment from all parties.
• Win your way up is a fair long-term organizing principle that can be accepted jointly.

A dynamic league pyramid paradoxically stabilizes FBS against competitive realignment.

The season

The season in this scheme is poised to remain relevant in ways that are disappearing today.

• Each year, most teams play everyone else in a regionally based league, plus a key rival.
• Regular season games gain value because league champs win their way up the pyramid.
• Meanwhile, the P league gives major college football a regular-season national champion.

Regional and national drivers of fan engagement coexist rather than conflict under this plan.

The cup

An all in cup solves big, deep issues that College Football Playoff expansion doesn’t address.

• Any scarcity of access builds inequality among schools of funds, fans, and recruits.
• All in is the only equalizer: the cup becomes something any team could win any year.
• All in wholly separates the season and cup, the former no longer a mere setup to the latter.

CFP expansion ultimately only relocates access controversies. The cup eliminates them.

Overview

Replacing entrenched college football institutions will not be done without observable effort.

• FBS must strike out on its own, buy out old interests, and freeze out non-system players.
• But these are mostly versions of costs that major college football pays repeatedly today.
• Pulling off these tasks once to set up a more perfect union will be hard, but doable.

All of FBS (even fans) gains from this scheme. If everyone keeps that in mind, it will work.

Strike out

Major college football will have to break a lot of new ground in self-organization.

• NCAA bureaucracy will have to be reinvented or even replaced with a new governing body.
• Teams, especially elites, will have to get ready for up to 18-game seasons.
• Transitional formats may be needed unless nearly all 130 FBS teams join up in year 1.

Only an end state is described here. A process for reaching it would require a longer proposal.

Buy out

A lot of existing stakeholders will need to be paid off to pivot to a new system without them.

• Long-term conference media rights and bilateral scheduling deals are instantly obsolete.
• Various executive and administrative jobs will be redefined, split up, or eliminated.
• One-time and ongoing revenue transfers among programs and levels must be hashed out.

Again, though, buyouts get done today. More surplus to go around won’t make them harder.

Freeze out

Finally, the system as proposed functions only if all (not most) parties commit completely to it.

• Teams must schedule only others on the pyramid, allowing no football independents.
• The season format reduces scheduled non-conference play to a single game per year.
• The math of the cup makes it hard to welcome new teams into major college football.

Programs who want this regime must totally exclude all those not participating, until they do.

Conclusion

A radical restructure of major college football can’t cure all that ails it – only most.

• It won’t end player-level issues like compensation and health – but it won’t grow them.
• Until it’s fully implemented, it can’t self-ensure the universal buy-in it ultimately needs.
• But pro/rel robustly addresses today’s increasingly unequal, unsustainable competition.

This proposal offers a worthwhile way to halt reactive, harmful structural dynamics in FBS.